THE QUESTION OF QUALITY EDUCATION IN NIGERIA (2)

Nigeria's educational  failure  will continue to subsist unless the following variable, indices or factors are challenged by a revolution and revolution only.

Firstly, the appointment and promotion of teachers from the primarily schools through  the secondary schools to the universities has been drastically compromised since 1980s. Stake -holders of education in Nigeria know very well that people from no where  are lifted out of social or pecuniary interest  and appointed lecturers whose primary contribution is to became professors  and head of institutions the way  they  were appointed.

Secondly the idea of institutional and university autonomy is like a blanket power vested on the heads of institution to appoint lectures and professors without merit, which at any rate justified by the currency of bourgeois autonomy  constructed where professorship is  lacking in international content in most universities in Nigeria.

Thirdly that some  universities reject some  professors for appointment  for sabbatical or substantive positions only portrays quality of Nigeria professors and teachers as well as that teaching and learning is questionable in some universities

Fourthly increasing population and expansion of number of universe are not being managed to correspond in geometrical proportion to the quality of education instead it has brought a rapidly alarming rate of educational corruption; as this phenomenon has released unmerited unwanted lecturers and teachers who cannot  afford to sit down for at least one hour to ponder, cogitate on 'problem predicate' yet our system appoints and  promote lecturers and professors indiscriminately every year.

Fifthly, sorting-out, bribery and favoritism in higher institutions of learning  are a society induced , a symptom of primitive and barbaric capitalism.

A streaming population of unrestrained youths fall into the lap of ethnic , sectional and sectarian generated corrupt lecturers in order to grease the elbow  of get certificate quick syndrome.

The problem of Nigeria education has passed the level of describing   it as facing challenges but is in a state of near irreversible chaos which however can be paradoxically and mutably  re-written in new education history and constitution for  our country. When a piece of history  gets to its dead end only a revolution can re-define it.

The jump to education organized for industrial age without first of all meeting the demands of education based on knowledge economy is fallacy: a blind action without premise that has set African educational system, especially Nigeria on the perpetual teeth of  failure and somersaulting and fifthly good governance is the bottom line  answer to educational failure in Nigeria without which democracy will not be sustained and corruption triumphs. In a corrupt country even private initiative in education will be corrupt

There  is a adage that says that anything worth doing at all is worth doing well. Democracy and good governance must go along with social responsibility and non-governmental initiative and participation in education. If the government continues with its lackadaisical attitude  to education, the wind of change that started favouring private primary and secondary schools in the 1970's will  begin now to favor private universities disbanding our primary and secondary schools as well as   our polytechnic and universities as republics  of the poor and the never -do- wells.

•Maduabuchi Dukor is Professor of Philosophy at Nnamdi Azikiwe University and President/ Editor -in-chief  of Essence Library.08037143816